An accumulator allows a hydraulic cylinder rod to move without changing the volume of oil in the cylinder. The accumulator has an accumulator volume that is separated from the hydraulic cylinder volume. When the cylinder rod moves, without changing the amount of oil in the cylinder, a movable element moves to compress the accumulator volume and thus absorb and release energy. This tends to even out a force profile exerted by the hydraulic cylinder rod.
There are a wide variety of different applications for an accumulator. For instance, on mobile machines, a piston accumulator can be used in a cab suspension cylinder. It can also be used in a seat suspension cylinder or in a wide variety of other applications.
In one example, accumulators can be used in agricultural equipment in order to even out a downforce that is applied by the equipment on the ground that it is treating. For instance, row units on a planter follow the ground profile by using a combination of gauge wheels (to keep the row unit from sinking into the ground) and a downforce assembly that includes springs (which can be either mechanical, pneumatic, or a combination of the two) to push disk openers into the ground. Currently, downforce assemblies provide a relatively fixed downforce, which may or may not be adjustable, while planting. Because there is no dampening in the downforce assembly, row units that are moving over soil while planting tend to bounce after hitting a hard patch of soil. This can result in incorrect seed placement. The seeds can be at an incorrect depth, or the seeds can even be dropped on the surface of the ground, because the row units can bounce completely out of the ground.
In some systems, an operator can address this by increasing the downforce on the row unit. However, depending upon the different types of soil conditions, this can actually be detrimental. For example, if the downforce is too high, the gauge wheels can compress the sides of the furrow too much so that the sidewalls are too hard. Also, the seed depth can be too great.
Adding hardware to a row unit also presents some challenges. Row units can have a relatively large number of hardware components. Thus, packaging additional hardware components on an already crowded row unit, can be become difficult.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.